Contributiones Florae Australiensis. VIII. 93 
mon pedicel to each group of 3 spikelets about 2—6 inches, bearing 
terminally a hermaphrodite spikelet and 2 lateral male spikelets on stalks 
of slightly unequal length. The common pedicel above the oblique 
pointed articulation, possesses comparatively long silky white hairs, 
which turn brown when the fruit is ripe, the stalks of the 2 male 
spikelets are edged with a row of similar hairs, are broader than the 
common pedicel and are slightly flattened. There are 2 keel-shaped 
empty, unawned, sterile glumes in both kinds of spikelets, about 3 lines 
long, and covered externally with soft white hairs. In the hermaphro- 
dite spikelet, they are rather hard and rigid, and wrapped round the 
£ynaecium, and their extremities are blunt and shortly  bilobed. 
In the male spikelets, they remain more or less membranous, and 
their extremities are acuminate. — There is one transparent, flowering 
glume, which, without the awn, is about 3/, the length of the outer ` 
glumes. The twisted awn is attached to the back of the flowering 
glume near the base, is sharply bent, measures 3—4 inches in 
length, and is hairy at the edges. — The Pale is membranous, 
transparent, 2-nerved, a little shorter than the flowering glume. 
— Stamens 3, similar in both kinds of flower. — Ovary free from the 
glume, styles 2, very fine, united for about !/, of their length — 
1—1'/, lines long. — Stigmas about 1 line long, pointed at the end. — 
Fruit surrounded by the persistent glumes, which are dark brown, 
shining, and almost glabrous when the fruit is ripe, and also by the 
persistent, flattened pedicels of the male spikelets. —  Caryopsis about 
2 lines long. Starch grains simple and compound, but mostly simple. 
— North-West Australia, Prince Regent’s River, Bradshaw and 
Alien, 1891; Napier, Broome Bay, G. F. Hill, 18. V. 10, no. 161. — 
This large and striking grass, with almost cane-like stems and solid 
internodes, filled with loose pith, comes from a district hitherto little 
explored, and may possibly be only locally distributed. It is apparently 
a semi-aquatic reed-like grass. The leaves and young shoots seem to 
be nutritious, and the loosely awned fruits would be less obnoxious than 
those of Stipa. The stems are, however, too hard to be of much use 
for fodder, though softer and more slender in young plahts. 
56. Stylidium alsinoides R. Br. var. cordifolium Ewart, |. c., p. 299, 
pl. LVI. — This plant has been considered by certain West Australian 
botanists as a distinet species, on the basis of the following features: 
— Branches, angled or winged, leaves cordate, or ovate and sessile, 
the two lower calyx segments connate to above the middle, and the 
segments of the corolla also more united. These are, however, all in- 
dependently variable characters, the most marked tendency being to 
the sessile cordate leaves, thus justifying the recognition of a variety 
with various intermediate forms, but not of a distinct species. — Various 
localities in West Australia, also in North Australia, Port Darwin, 
M. Holtze, 1890, no. 1171. And in North-West Australia, Isdell 
River, Graces Knob, Messmate Creek in Packhouse Range, between Isdell 
Range and Mt. Bartlett, 
